Another Life.

Chapter 7

I used to remember a small town outside of Birmingham Alabama that I had never been to.every street name, every short cut, every store's hours. I remembered riding a bike down those streets with a group of kids. I remember the first time I ever fell in love with anyone.  She lives next door, it was cliche, she was a year or two older and I had no idea how to impress her. We both were so young when the invasion started, when they took all the men to work camps. She was so grave, she never let us be separated... As much as possible anyways. An older woman and her sister were told to keep track if us, but we tried to escape that night and they punished the women by killing one of the. They were identical twins. They never spoke, before nor after, we never knew which died or what either was named. That night it felt like the world was dead with our hope, the next morning would bear no different. We were not alone in our endeavor, along the fence line, inclusive of the twin, bodies decorated our barrier. Nine of them maybe, I vomited and  turned my head away, into the embrace of my girl next door. They showed us when they burned all documents of our existence, they branded us with hot irons. They left us starving after weekly weigh ins. The beat us senseless and hosed the blood off to wake us back up. It wasn't yet the worse to come. I watch thirty seven youths in my camp commit suicide, no one tried to stop them.